With a bleak joblessness picture coming into clearer focus Friday, and the COVID-19 death toll in California crossing the 1,000 mark, Gov. Gavin Newsom is turning to a plethora of tech, industrial and policy titans, along with his four living predecessors, to advise him on a daunting task: how to restore a state economy battered by the raging pandemic.

The statewide unemployment rate jumped to 5.3% in March, a huge one-month increase from February’s all-time record-low jobless rate of 3.9%, according to a Friday report from the state Employment Development Department that is the first to illustrate the impact of COVID-19 on the state’s employment base. The true picture is almost certainly worse: Newsom said that 3.1 million Californians — more than 1 in 7 members of the workforce — have applied for unemployment benefits.

“We are now in a pandemic-induced recession here in the state of California,” Newsom said.

Tom Steyer, the Bay Area billionaire, climate activist and former presidential candidate, will co-chair the state’s 80-member Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery alongside the governor’s chief of staff, Ann O’Leary, Newsom announced at his daily press briefing Friday.

“Health and safety have to be paramount here in California, but everyone is also hurting economically,” Steyer said via video conference during the briefing. “People across the state are worried about their jobs, but they’re also worried about taking care of their families.”

Steyer is a risky choice in one respect: He spent months and millions of dollars advocating the impeachment of President Trump, while Newsom, since the coronavirus crisis began, has been careful to praise Trump publicly.

So far the federal government has taken the lead on programs to address the coronavirus-ravaged economy, with enhanced unemployment payments and direct stimulus benefits to most Americans. With the appointment of his task force, Newsom appears determined to bring the state’s resources to bear on the problem as well, although what form that assistance will take is an open question. The need, though, is clearly great.

In March, the Bay Area registered a loss of 27,000 jobs — the worst month for the region’s employment market since the Great Recession, according to the state EDD report. California as a whole staggered to a loss of 99,500 jobs last month, a setback that abruptly terminated the state’s record-setting economic expansion.

But the report measures only jobs lost and doesn’t reflect the plight of workers who filed for unemployment after they were furloughed, let go temporarily or suffered reduced hours. It was based on a monthly state survey that researchers completed a few days before the sweeping business shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders; thousands of layoffs have been announced since then, and even the state’s strongest companies have been impacted. Google announced Wednesday it would “significantly” reduce hiring for the rest of the year.

The Friday jobs totals were accompanied by even more somber milestones, as Newsom reported 95 coronavirus deaths in California on Thursday, the highest one-day tally since the pandemic began ravaging the state. The state surpassed 1,000 total COVID-19 deaths Friday, according to data compiled by the Bay Area News Group. Statewide, more than 28,000 COVID-19 infections have been reported.

“The worst 24-hour period since this virus attacked people in the state of California,” Newsom said. “The worst number of deaths that we have experienced. That’s humbling and it should be eye opening to people that think we’re out of the woods.”

Several decades of gubernatorial experience are on the panel with the membership of Jerry Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gray Davis and Pete Wilson. State officials such as Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly, and leaders of the California Legislature, including Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and State Senate President Toni Atkins, are also members.

The task force was announced a week after the quiet departure of Lenny Mendonca, who had headed Newsom’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

In a news release following his announcement, Newsom said the task force will begin meeting twice a month “to develop actions government and businesses can take to help Californians recover as fast as safely possible from the COVID-19 induced recession and to shape a fair, green, and prosperous future.” Newsom said the 80 members will be divided into issue-based subcategories and that he wants to implement strategies in “real time” as they are established and vetted, rather than getting a voluminous report of suggested plans in six months.

“We want to make this actionable. We want to make this meaningful,” he said.

Economist Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, said Newsom’s team would be wise to consider long-term economic stimulus packages that go beyond monetary support for unemployed Californians.

“No one is really talking about a stimulus program — a jobs program, an investment program,” Levy said, ticking off possibilities such as retrofitting buildings, extending transportation systems and building affordable housing. “You need money to fund any kind of stimulus program … but I suspect California might have more political will to do it than trying to get something through Congress.”

Blackwell said the task force and the state’s economic recovery represent an opportunity to rectify systemic economic inequalities — Friday, she mentioned people of color and homeless and incarcerated populations — as they rebuild the workforce.

“For one of the first times as a nation, we have gotten a glimpse of how interconnected we are and how what happens to one happens to all,” she said Friday. “We cannot go forward divided as the nation has been, between the haves and have-nots. We need to do something completely different going forward.”

Robert Salonga is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering criminal justice and public safety for The Mercury News. A San Jose native, he attended UCLA and has a Master's degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. He previously reported in Washington, D.C., Salinas and the East Bay, and is a middling triathlete. Reach him the low-tech way at 408-920-5002.

Kerry Crowley is a multimedia beat reporter covering the San Francisco Giants. He spent his early days throwing curveballs in San Francisco’s youth leagues before studying journalism at Arizona State University. Kerry has covered every level of baseball, from local preps to the Cape Cod League, and is now on a quest to determine which Major League city serves the best cheeseburger.

Jobs with state and city governments are usually a source of stability in the U.S. economy, but the financial devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has forced cuts that will reduce public services — from schools to trash pickup.